Re: Styling tabs with background image, or with stipples with different foreground color?

On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 4:28 PM Frank Steiner <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Stéphane Marks wrote:
>
> > I put an overline on the active tab
> >
> >        (set-face-attribute 'tab-bar-tab nil :overline xxx)
> > ...
> > To put the overline on an inactive tab change the face to be
> 'tab-bar-tab-inactive.
>
> The problem is not creating overlines with different colors for current
> an inactive tabs (note: I'm talking about tab-line tabs, but I guess that's
> the same with tab-bar).
>
> The question is how to set the overlines to different heights. Whenever
> enlarging any tab (by e.g. chosing a larger font size *only* for the
> current tab)
> *all* tabs will grow and so the overlines will always all be at the same
> height.
>

Gotcha.  I don't think Emacs supports differing overline heights.

That said, you can create your own function and add it
to tab-bar-tab-name-format-functions that alters the face for the active
tab to change its height.  The whole line will change height if they're not
all the same but I sense you know that.

(defun my/tab-bar-tab-name-format-fancy (name tab _i)
  (propertize name 'face (list :height
                               (if (eq (car tab) 'current-tab) 2.0 1.0))))

(setq tab-bar-tab-name-format-functions
      (list #'tab-bar-tab-name-format-hints
            #'my/tab-bar-tab-name-format-fancy
            #'tab-bar-tab-name-format-face
            #'tab-bar-tab-name-format-close-button))